my old RME Fireface died today… so I’m looking for a new interface and came across the AXR4 from Yamaha what seems to work great with cubase but I couldn’t found any word about Nuendo. Do you guys have any experience by chance? Or is there any other interface you might suggest? I’m also tempted by Dante…
I actually use the control room a lot and in a AXR Nuendo 10 thread in the Steinberg hardware section of this forum some guys did point out that the control room doesn’t work with AXR, but didn’t really understand how and why actually, so if you have experience, any word on that?
This is a costly high end interface using legacy digital I/O, limiting it’s extensibility as soon as 96 KHz or more is used.
More, there is no daisy chaining for direct monitoring, this mean that if you need to daisy chain two or three interfaces, you loose even more digital connectivity because an I/O port on each interface will be used for the direct monitoring bus linking.
More the drivers seems to be unfinished as of today (AXR extension not working at the same time as control room).
You could read my comments about this interface in this thread :
Hopefully we’ll see an interface using more modern I/O connectivity in the near future. For the music market a lower cost interface limited at 48 / 96 KHz with AES50 connectivity seems the way to go.
AES50 is a low cost point to point multichannel digital bus, simple and efficient.
This would give a good balance between cost and extensibility, giving access to third party low cost hardware I/O extension through AES50.
Then we’ll find back most of the cost and connectivity advantages we had in the analog word.
The AXR4 seems to be designed for recordings with a low track count, where very high quality (192 or 384 KHz) is needed. Obviously this is a very small market mainly restricted to high end jazz or classic recordings.
Dante is good, has some advantages for large facilities because it’s IP routable through normal Ethernet switches and routers (iso level 3 protocol), but is more expensive.
Ok, thanks a lot. I do mostly sound design and therefore record sometimes some foleys or speaker, but that’s not often. I did hope for a seamless integration in Nuendo, but as this is not the case, I’ll find more advantages in Dante as I do have sometimes additional sound designer or artists that could so easily plug into the system.
Ok. I think that Nuendo integration is the most important point for an audio interface when used for recording (low latency monitoring control and low latency mixer control from Nuendo).
Even more important than digital connectivity.
Digital connectivity is important when you need a high track count, or when connecting two or more audio systems as in your case.
As soon as the interface has enough digital connectivity for your needs, then it’s always possible to use a converter to convert between the different multichannel bus formats in use today. Mainly MADI, Dante, AVB, AES50, USB…
This relax the interface choice as well.
The advantage of using such a converter (KlarkTeknik DN9650 for example) is that it gives opening with the different digital I/O standards and SRC capability (sample rate conversion), this mean you can connect a system that is not using the same sample rate, or that cannot be clocked to your main system.
A dead fireface is almost always bad caps in the psu. You can buy a spare psu and replace it it is not that hard. Or you can replace the caps if you ever have done soldering.
We have 9 units, 4 or 5 have died during the last ten years. It has always been the psu never the unit itself.
That’s true. For most electronic devices, PSU caps are most of the time the reason for a failure. Sometimes (more rarely) a power transistor is shorted or a regulator is dead. In this case the repair can be a bit more complicated because a shorted power component can destroy surrounding components like resistors or other active components.
I did revival a MOTU 828 interface just replacing chemical caps in it. I’ve seen devices, like Adams Smith Zeta Three synchronizers, with about ten dead capacitors in their power supply !
Chemical caps are dying because they become dry. Most of the time this can be seen watching for their case top. If it’s slightly domed, then it’s a sign of failure with almost 100% probability.
The quality of caps is important. Use Panasonic or other leader caps manufacturer for replacement, with the same or higher temperature specification (85 or 105°) or you could get the same problem very fast.
Another point is the PCB design. Sometimes it is necessary to modify the device ventilation to avoid capacitor heating. There are often design differences between high end manufacturers and low cost ones at this level. The first ones do take seriously into account components eating so that their devices lifespan is almost not affected by capacitors aging.
Capacitor aging is mostly a result of too much eating.
An old device not working anymore after a power off / power on is a clear sign of capacitor failure.